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Mon, 27 Jul 2015 12:38:39 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=444Legalize Sustainable Sanitationhttp://www.phlush.org/2015/07/27/legalize-sustainable-sanitation/
http://www.phlush.org/2015/07/27/legalize-sustainable-sanitation/#commentsMon, 27 Jul 2015 12:00:04 +0000http://www.phlush.org/?p=7167“Legalize Sustainable Sanitation” is Molly Danielsson Winter’s prepared testimony on behalf of H.375, the bill that is currently under review in Vermont to expand and incentivize the use of ecological toilets and greywater systems.

Molly is Director of Recode, a Portland-based nonprofit whose mission is to ensure access and accelerate adoption of sustainable building and development practices. The group was founded in order to look at how graywater could be captured from household sinks, showers, and laundry machines and reused to water gardens and flush toilets. Recode led successful efforts in Oregon to legalize graywater reuse in 2008 and broadened composting toilets rules in 2012. In 2014, Recode drafted the voluntary national composting toilet code with urine diversion for IAMPO, which creates model codes for adoption by government and code agencies throughout the world.

Sanitation history and how we got here

Molly opens her testimony by highlighting an assumption on which America’s sanitary infrastructure was built: that there would always be sufficient water to dilute and transport human waste. She then summarizes the history of sewered sanitation. During London’s 1854 cholera outbreak, John Snow showed that it was contact with feces that led to cholera NOT the simple smell of open sewers. Sewers came to London in the 1860s to remove the odors and pathogens associated with excreta but simply displaced the problems to downstream communities. By the mid 20th century, wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) had appeared. Simple settling and filtering removed solids and cleaned wastewater just enough so it could be dumped back into waterways. It took another generation for WWTPs to incorporate biological treatment. The 1972 Clean Water Act required aerobic treatment with microorganisms. Solids, however, were often dumped back onto fresh and salt-water bodies, something outlawed by the mid-1990s when sludge application to land became the dominant practice. The EPA tested for some, but not all, toxics in sludge. Today, more than half the sludge produced by American WWTPs is applied to land.

The development of household sanitation in rural areas followed a parallel trajectory with excreta considered problematic: first for its bad smell, later for the germs that could spread, and finally for environmental consequences. Yet codes have not greatly changed nor has there been much innovation, a situation Molly attributes to a general belief that sewered sanitation would eventually reach rural communities and, consequently, septic systems were temporary.

Volume of annual per adult wastewater=poo (brown)+pee (yellow)+flushing water (blue)

Enter the codes

Official concerns persisted and building codes started to include mandatory wastewater treatment for all households. And while human excreta is modest in volume, flushing with water enormously increases the wastewater that municipal treatment plants or on-site systems need to cope with.

Molly notes that there are alternative treatment technologies that enhance the functioning of waterborne systems. These entail the incorporation of sophisticated filters, pumped aeration, and added microorganisms making them three to four times as expensive as conventional septic systems plus they require electricity and periodic maintenance.

Current codes are complex. Among the complications, says Danielsson, are different sets of regulations. Parts of sewer systems within the house are guided by plumbing codes while the septic and sewer infrastructure outside the house are regulated by the EPA’s “503 biosolids rules” and, for graywater, by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality. Composting toilets fall under state plumbing codes, and Recode has made a substantial contribution by creating code language for composting toilets that are site built and foreign manufactured for the IAMPO Uniform Plumbing Code’s 2015 Green Supplement for states to adopt. Earlier codes required humus from toilets to be buried under at least six inches of soil, but the IAMPO code requires it to be put on top of the soil, where there is the most biological activity, and to be covered with there inches of carbon material such as wood chips.

Benefits of contemporary, sprawling, municipal wastewater treatment infrastructure are obvious: ease for users, ability to serve a whole city, and return some nutrients to soil. At the same time, WWTPs consume enormous amounts of energy, contribute to combined sewer overflows during heavy rain, and lose nutrients in urine while sending sludge contaminated with industrial toxics and pharmaceuticals to the land.

As for septic tank operations, Molly provides an interesting analogy. The initial WWTP treatment stage is like a French coffee-press, and the first tank of an on-site septic system is like cowboy coffee. In the former, a filter presses down on the solids; in the later the solids simply settle with time. Every two or three years, septic system owners must have solids removed and further treated to eliminate pathogens. The liquids infiltrate the drain field. A key problem is that septic systems were not designed to treat the nitrogen in urine nor is nitrogen easily absorbed in soils of the drain field. Instead, nitrogen laden effluent plumes may be detected up to 2/3 of a mile away. How are these plumes detected? Through the existence of caffeine excreted in urine!

Performance codes and innovation

Technologies like graywater reuse, composting toilets and urine diversion are not considered wastewater treatment techniques in Oregon (and many other states) and therefore are not helpful to households who want to replace a failing septic system. The overarching constraint to more sustainable sanitation, says Molly, is “prescriptive codes.” Many codes were written years ago and state stipulations which made sense at the time but which do not allow for innovation. Instead Recode advocates “performance based codes” and has been working on them since 2012 with DEQ. Performance based codes define how systems perform, including everything from the toilet within the house to pre-treatment, treatment and finishing options in the yard or beyond. To create performance based code, it’s necessary to set goals for performance or the required degree of purification.

“First we set a goal,” Molly explains. “How clean do we want things to be before they enter the environment? So for a performance-based case you would say, ‘What is you nitrogen reduction? What is you phosphorus reduction? How much are you reducing pathogens by? Is it durable? Watertight?’ Things like that. Whereas a prescriptive code would say ‘What are the dimensions? The materials? Check, check, check.'”

Performance codes can grow as we learn more, says Danielsson. Systems don’t have to look a certain way. They have to work. It’s really important that we don’t specify how systems look because this might prevent us from having innovation we’d really like in the future.

Opportunities for Vermont

In her concluding comments, Molly advises Vermonters to look at the four states that have legalized composting toilet and the range of options that protect human health. States can adopt IAMPO’s Uniform Plumbing Code’s 2015 Green Supplement and the section Recode drafted, which already works with the plumbing code because it’s been vetted by IAMPO’s large committee of experts.”If Vermont is interested in joining Oregon to allow for a range of innovative sanitation solutions to be used instead of septic systems, as I mentioned earlier, you can partner with Recode and the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality as we work to create a model on-site performance-based code.” In August 2015 Molly Danielsson Winter and Abraham Noe-Hayes of Vermont’s Rich Earth Institute will travel to Europe to study best practices, compile data to inform the new codes, and prepare educational materials for Oregon.

“The Nitrogen Cycle” is one of a collection of six posters.

Announcement!

Beyond her day job, Molly is interested in provoking broader audiences to think about where their poop goes. She’s currently pre-selling a set of newsprint posters created in collaboration with Mathew Lippincott, that tell where your poop goes, why it matters, and provide real alternatives. There are TWO new posters!

Hearings in the Vermont House of Representatives earlier this month give a penetrating and carefully documented look into the issues we are researching at PHLUSH. House Bill 375, sponsored by Representative Teo Zagar seeks to expand and incentivize the use of ecological toilets and greywater systems. Now that much of the extensive testimony organized by Vermonters Against Toxic Sludge is on the record, we can all learn from it. Much of the testimony is available on video, including the initial offering on “Legacy Water Treatment Systems.”

The group’s Founder, Kai Mikkel Førlie, starts off the testimony before the House Committee on Fish, Wildlife and Water Resources with a look at the challenges we face from the wastewater treatment systems we’re already using. Referring to 40 CFR Part 503 – Standards for the Use and Disposal of Sewage Sludge, otherwise known as the “503 Rule,” Førlie notes that there is a lot of confusion surrounding whether or not owners of ecological toilets are ever obligated to follow the waste management practices and procedures that are mandated by the 503 Rule and, in particular, the associated pathogen testing component. This confusion stems from several overlapping issues:

States like Vermont that permit contradictory practices like simple burial of the byproducts of an ecological toilet without pathogen testing.

Operators of eco-toilets located in the backcountry that are permitted by individual states to spread the byproducts on the forest floor without pathogen testing (again contradictory to the 503 Rule)

The EPA itself, which declares on the one hand that individual states, not the EPA, are responsible for the management of the contents of an ecological toilet and on the other that as long as the material is not referred to as “fertilizer” then the federal rules don’t apply and

The language in the 503 Rule itself which, when subjected to a critical reading, appears to only refer to the byproducts of toilets that rely on the use of water or chemicals (neither of which is utilized by dry toilets).”

The takeaway lies in the key phrase “dispose of”. People looking to “dispose of” (rather than “make-use of”) the contents of their eco-toilet are fully exempt under the 503 Rule. This much is clear. He emphasizes that he does not want to repeat the period of the 1970s and 80s when developers and the general public engaged in irresponsible and often clandestine waterless toilet construction. Instead the thrust of the entire three plus hours of testimony is how to do it right.

Førlie points out that wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) were designed to prevent the direct release of nutrient-laden effluent into nearby waterways. The reality, however, is that local governments have spent lavishly on WWTPs that try to remove nutrients from the water only to have these same nutrients isolated in sludge, trucked back upstream and applied to land where they return to bodies of waters in the form of farm runoff.

Along with the nutrients, post-treatment sludge contains a vast variety pharmaceuticals and industrial toxics, all of which go into an attractively bagged “fertilizer” that is sold to Vermonters. There are very few reliable studies on these contaminants; about 1,000 new ones appear every year and only a handful are independently tested. Even wastewater treatment plants with stellar testing programs, do not test and control for the great majority of chemicals. What’s more, 85,000 industrial chemicals are not tested for synergistic effects when they combine with other substances.

Especially illuminating is the Vermont Materials Management Plan, which is a new name for the State Solid Waste Plan. These regulations require biosolids marketing programs by WWTPs and other governmental and private entities engaged in conventional treatment. No alternative technologies like eco-toilets are mentioned! Local authorities are asked to “work with interested parties to examine and evaluate innovative and alternative uses for wastewater biosolids” and “continue to look for opportunities to educate and inform the commercial sector about the beneficial uses and the opportunities for residual materials.”

“We can hardly afford the technologies we have now much less enhance them to deal with every more powerful contaminants,” says Førlie. Existing systems are breaking the budgets of the states now that federal funding that came with the EPA is greatly reduced. WWTPs are simply inappropriate for a low energy, low carbon future.

Moreover, WWTP energy demands are excessive, often the single largest consumer of electricity in a municipal portfolio. In addition, they are massive consumers of water, with drinking water the standard input into private and municipal water systems. Now, in direct response to water scarcity, New England has several desalination plants and even a fresh water pipeline.

Førlie concludes: Most of the wastewater treatment systems that we rely on today have been with us for decades and some for as much as a century. These treatment systems themselves mostly date from the Clean Water Act – the early 70s – and most are in need of upgrades. I’ve already outlined that these systems need massive public investment with long payoff periods so what I am wary of, and what I think you should be wary as well, of is paying into and relying solely on these systems for the next 30 or 40 years. I don’t think we can afford it, and I don’t think the planet can either… We now know much better and much less expensive ways of tackling the problems that these systems have helped to create or come to neglect.

Note: We are grateful to Kai for posting a series of testimonies in conjunction with Vermont H.375 in the PHLUSH Facebook group. We encourage readers to join this open group and the ongoing discussion there as well as to comment here.

Write a comment…

]]>http://www.phlush.org/2015/05/28/lets-rethink-legacy-wastewater-treatment-systems/feed/0Enacting Awareness: Water, Waste, and Public Spacehttp://www.phlush.org/2015/05/26/enacting-awareness-water-waste-and-public-space/
http://www.phlush.org/2015/05/26/enacting-awareness-water-waste-and-public-space/#commentsTue, 26 May 2015 19:04:34 +0000http://www.phlush.org/?p=7186With last Friday’s whimsical 5K walk, activists at the University of California at Santa Cruz focused attention on often-evaded issues. “Slugs to Sludge” was created as a playful way to raise awareness of sewage infrastructure and the water it requires, and to advocate for action on ecological sanitation at UCSC and beyond. With the average American flushing away an estimated annual 5 thousand gallons of drinking water in a time of drought, sanitation clearly needs to be central to the dialogue. Walkers followed the path of human waste from the campus to the wastewater treatment facility at Neary Lagoon, having fun along the way in with activities organized by various environmental groups.

Porcelain toilets greet walkers at the Slugs to Sludge starting line at the University of California Santa Cruz.

Participants take a quick rest before beginning the 5k pilgrimage to the wastewater treatment plant.

Lift the lid on the bleak facts about drought and our wasteful ways with water.

Where was your last poop in Santa Cruz? How will it co-mingle with the movements of 80.000 others the treatment plant serves?

The sewage outflow pipe from University of California Santa Cruz lies along the base of a large ravine. Human impact collides with Nature.

Another stormwater outflow pipe joins up with the main sewage outflow pipe.

A group of walkers takes a break at one of the info tables set up by a campus sustainability group.

People of Color Sustainability Collective reminds walkers just which communities are most impacted by the inequitable provision of water and sanitation in the United States.

Note how the pipe disappears underground as it passes through a more residential area.

Walkers pass a large stormwater collection and conveyance facility.

Slugs to Sludge 5K ends at the wastewater treatment plant with songs about poop and awareness games created by participating groups.

]]>http://www.phlush.org/2015/05/26/enacting-awareness-water-waste-and-public-space/feed/0Global Homeless Day: Toilet Solutions from France for the USAhttp://www.phlush.org/2015/05/05/global-homeless-day-toilet-solutions-from-france-for-the-usa/
http://www.phlush.org/2015/05/05/global-homeless-day-toilet-solutions-from-france-for-the-usa/#commentsTue, 05 May 2015 22:46:13 +0000http://www.phlush.org/?p=7086“The restroom thus becomes a tool for figuring out just how a society functions – what it values, how it separates people from one another, and the kinds of trade-offs that come to be made,” says sociologist Harvey Moltoch. While we at PHLUSH believe in safe and accessible toilets for all people (families, children, those with health needs, the LGBTQ community, business people, the elderly, and those living on the street), statistics show certain US populations are increasingly excluded from safe and accessible toilets. Approximately 2.5 million to 3 million Americans are houseless each year, and almost 40 percent of them live outside. How does a lack of safe toilets impact them? What can be done to remedy these toilet exclusions?

To commemorate Global Homeless Day, we feature two innovative French organizations. Their collaborative efforts are equally applicable here in the US. Toilettes Du Monde works to improve sanitation in France and abroad, and Terr’Eau focuses on dry and composting toilets in France. Together they created a guide to help houseless people in choosing and building toilets for their living locations. The GAPS manual encourages participatory techniques for assessing sanitation needs and constructing toilets with vulnerable communities. A similar approach could be used in the US, where the number of informal group camps is growing (dozens of cities with camps of more than 50 individuals) and the number of public toilets is decreasing. Two articles in the last week about tent cities in Dallas and Honolulu illustrate this challenge.

What is unique about the GAPs manual is the avoidance of a “turnkey” approaches for toilets. Organizations are encouraged to collaborate with vulnerable people to choose toilets that meet their needs not the organization’s needs. We have translated a small part of this manual, which asks readers the following questions, into English:

Do you agree with the idea that you are not going to find a recipe in this guide?

Are you willing to reconsider your views on the issues which you have identified for action?

Can you accept that the people with whom you are working may express needs different from the ones you see?

Do you agree that the priority is to consider the needs of those vulnerable rather than yours?

Don’t you think that solutions can come from vulnerable people themselves?

Can your role essentially be listening ears and helping hands?

Do you acknowledge that the urgent and precarious situation that these people find themselves within is not a hindrance to engaging them in a participatory process?

The two French NGOs have applied the work of the GAPS manual in France where they have assisted Roma communities in building and maintaining their own composting toilets. Similar to participatory rural appraisal efforts heralded by Robert Chambers in the past, such methods are still valuable today. If applied in the US, the GAPS method could help alleviate sanitation burdens faced by hundreds of thousands of unhoused Americans, and could be supported by concerned neighbours, agencies, and city officials who wish to help them. For more information, please see the GAPS video which we have also translated into English.

Living houseless in an urban environment requires personal savvy and logistic skill. Days are often an endless series of searches, lines, and waits: finding the next meal, a safe place to sleep, a public restroom.

Here at PHLUSH, we see toilet availability as a human right and advocate for building urban public restrooms that serve everybody. In recent years, strong and smart organizations that collaborate with and serve homeless citizens to meet basic hygiene needs have emerged in other large west coast cities. We applaud the work of Lava Mae in San Francisco and Girls Think Tank in San Diego.

Lava Mae has put toilets and showers on wheels in San Francisco.

Lava Mae’s busses with bathrooms serve San Francisco’s unhoused.

“There are only seven locations in the City of San Francisco where if you are homeless you can go to take a shower” says founder Doniece Sandoval. “You’re looking at 16 to 20 shower stalls for the 3,500 people who actually live in the streets. And that’s untenable. And I just thought, if you can put gourmet food on wheels and take it anywhere, why not toilets and showers?”As the local transit agency MUNI was replacing older, diesel-powered buses, Sandoval investigated and discovered that they had a donation program, applied, and was successful. People thought she was crazy but loved the idea and promised to back her up if Lava Mae could get it done.

Retrofitting a passenger bus to accommodate two full bathrooms is not easy. Architect/Designer Brett Terpeluk stepped on board to help figure it out. Residential hot-water heaters were installed to hook up with water supplied from fire hydrants. Grey water from showers is treated with an eco-friendly cleaner and disinfectant called Vital Oxide and then can be drained into sidewalk catch basins. Black water from toilets is picked up by a waste water hauling company. Consequently, the bus does not need to transport heavy tanks.

Today, the first Lava Mae bus is bringing bathrooms to the streets four days a week in collaboration with local agencies and volunteers from every walk of life. And with activists in other cities clamoring to do the same, they have issued a Hygiene Starter Kit, which walks others through their first steps as they hone operations and their extremely promising model.

Personal hygiene makes all the difference in whether a person can attend to business, look for work, go to class, and the like. After a shower, you need a change of clothes, and this implies you have some place to keep them. The vast majority of North America’s homeless, however, must haul around everything they own – birth certificates, IDs, and keepsakes as well as clothes. Keeping their belongings safe is a constant worry. An individual who walks into an employment. interview carrying their worldly possessions is just not likely to get hired.

Girls Think Tank has been making storage available in San Diego.

“Without free storage I would have to find a grocery cart, chain my things to a street light pole and pray that they were safe,” says a formerly homeless individual who was able to get off the streets thanks in part to the Transitional Storage Center.

In 2012, Girls Think Tank (GTT) took over operation of the Center located at 252 16th Street, San Diego. Since then, the nonprofit has expanded capacity to allow 353 homeless individuals to safely store their belongings for free. Their items are kept safe and secure throughout the week eliminating the hassle and stress of carting their lives on their backs. And by keeping belongings off of the streets, the Center serves not only people without houses but also the business community and housed residents who share San Diego streets

Possessions are safe at the Transitional Storage Center operated by San Diego’s Girls Think Tank.

“When I spend time at the Center, I am constantly reminded that every “homeless person” is an individual with a unique story,” says GTT Executive Director Heather Pollock. “I see men put on their hardhats and get ready to go to their construction job. I watch students digging through their bins to pull out textbooks and binders. I observe mothers with their children, getting their kids ready for the evening. These are people like you and me, who, due to unforeseeable and unfortunate events, are now living their lives without a safe place to call home. These bins aid individuals in their transition off the streets, and offer a service that no other program in San Diego provides.”

The Transitional Storage Center is at 252 16th Street on property owned by the San Diego Housing Commission. Two full time staff have themselves experienced homelessness and take pride in the way the Center serves its customers. The Center is open weekdays from 7 to 11am and from 4:30 – 7:30pm and on Saturday mornings from 8am until noon. Operations cost approximately $1 per bin per day. GTT receives support for operations from the City of San Diego, the Anthony Robbins Foundation, Harbor Presbyterian Church, Downtown Fellowship of Churches and Ministries, Jerome’s, Ace Parking and individual donors.

The testimonies of those who have used the Center speak to the importance of this program. A student at City College said, “I can wear clean clothes to school knowing my personal belongings are safe and secure.” A job seeker said the Center “allows me to use the library which doesn’t allow large bags, and to interview, to look professional and ‘un-homeless’.” An under-employed security guard said “I can ride the bus and go look for a better job… Now, I feel like a real citizen of San Diego.”

PHLUSH is grateful to Matthew Eisen and Heather Pollock of Girls Think Tank and to the folks at Lava Mae for their vision and for their collaboration on this piece.

Every day, the average person flushes 10 gallons of clean drinking water down the toilet. This constitutes a waste of two precious resources: scarce water supplies and human manure, which could instead be composted to form a fertile soil amendment.

While there are various commercial composting toilet (CT) units that are legal for home use in most states, they are often too expensive for many would-be users. At the same time, excellent open source designs for affordable, easy-to-construct, site-built CT systems are available. However, local laws typically prohibit their use.

Soil Stewards have built composting toilet systems at 24 pilot sites in Arizona.

In 2012, the Tucson, Arizona-based nonprofit Watershed Management Group (WMG) set out to change this paradigm. Working with the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, WMG launched a “Soil Stewards” pilot program to install and monitor 24 site-built CT systems in homes and organizations throughout southern Arizona. The end goal with this program is to develop a safe and effective, do-it-yourself CT design that is legally permitted for Arizona residents.

After a year and a half of use, samples taken from these systems were tested by the University of Arizona and given the classification of Class A compost, safe for agricultural and landscape use. With this data in hand, WMG is now working to get these designs approved for legal use in Arizona.

While this effort continues, another major hurdle to widespread composting toilet acceptance remains: public opinion. The idea of pooping in a barrel or bucket still lacks a certain appeal for many people who have grown accustomed to their flush toilet lifestyles.

WMG’s barrel composting toilet.

In order to change this perception, WMG is focusing on teaching young kids about the benefits of composting toilets through the children’s book Poo to Peaches. With colorful illustrations and a fun, rhyming style, the book explains the nutrient cycle and the basics of proper CT use for preschool and kindergarten aged children. In addition to the kids’ story, the book will include technical information for adults on the design and maintenance of barrel CT systems.

WMG has recently launched a Kickstarter campaign to finish and publish Poo to Peaches, as well as to offer local educational programs at schools and libraries. Rewards include hard copies of the competed book, a special Q&A webinar with CT experts, and tours of the Soil Stewards CT sites in Arizona. For those that back the project at the $1,000 level, WMG will build a 2-barrel composting toilet system and make it available for pick up at the group’s Tucson headquarters.

]]>http://www.phlush.org/2015/03/02/poo-to-peaches-educating-the-next-generation-of-composting-toilet-users/feed/1World Toilet Day 2014 Recaphttp://www.phlush.org/2014/12/08/world-toilet-day-2014-recap/
http://www.phlush.org/2014/12/08/world-toilet-day-2014-recap/#commentsTue, 09 Dec 2014 05:18:11 +0000http://www.phlush.org/?p=6946World Toilet Day on November 19 brought such a deluge of articles, new reports, infographics, and videos that it’s taken us until now to work through them. International media outlets, when compared to those in the United States, often better convey dynamic technicalities of sanitation systems on multiple scales. But after a review of many articles worldwide, we want to share some of our favorites and not-so-favorites.

Writing in The Guardian, Nathalia Gjersoe points out that access to toilets decreases disease by twice as much as access to clean drinking water while receiving only a fraction of the funding. She blames this situation on the powerful feeling of revolution known as disgust. “So how can we get people to engage with the problem?” she asks. Her short, intriguing inquiry into disgust draws on the research of Paul Rozin and associates. Disgust brings both evolutionary protective behaviors and actions that appear irrational, even magical. “Scientifically literate adults will refuse to eat fudge in the shape of dog turds, to drink from a brand new bedpan or put plastic vomit in their mouth,” she writes. “These objects have never come into contact with disgusting substances yet are nonetheless rejected.” Gjersoe says we have to shift the focus and re-frame the toilet as Jack Sim has done. It is only when fun supplants disgust, when celebrities jump on the World Toilet Day bandwagon, when toilets are cool, that we will make any progress.

In “Flushed with achievement”, Chris Hilton shares an excerpt from London Labour and the London Poor, specifically author Henry Mayhew’s interviews with night-men in mid-19th century London. Teams of four worked under the cover of darkness, descending into cesspits, shoveling fresh excreta into large buckets and hauling it away in a cart to Battle Bridge. There it was dumped in settling ponds, mixed with slaughterhouse blood, thickened with ash and sold as fertilizer. This nutrient cycling ended with Bazalgette’s sewers. “In some respects the mid-Victorian city was greener than that of a hundred years later,” concludes the author. Today’s toilets are machines “for removing our bodily wastes swiftly and making them somebody else’s problem.”

The 2014 GLAAS Report

Calling it the “most important report you’ve never heard of,” WASH Advocates CEO John Oldfield plugged UN Water’s Global Analysis and Assessment of Sanitation and Drinking-Water, or the GLAAS 2014 report. Available in a multitude of languages, with data from 94 countries, the report demonstrates the positive policy reform coupled with weak capacity and gaps in human resources, a lack of evidence-based data, the need for WASH in schools, a neglect of hygiene promotion, insufficient financing, and failure to scale up affordable services for the poor. Despite an increase in development assistance for water and sanitation, there is continued focus in the aid paradigm on infrastructure rather than support for sustainable service delivery. Oldfield wants us to “make sure the right people across the globe read it.” Based on GLAAS 2014 findings, Oldfield makes strong suggestions to implementing nonprofits. “Work alongside or within government systems…rather than in spite of the local government,” he says, “support those governments’ efforts to develop and strengthen their own capacity to monitor and evaluate WASH efforts rather than imposing your own.” He wants funders to “start with a problem, and fund the appropriate solution set, not vice versa.” They need to focus on community transformation rather than creating dependencies. They must not be tempted by the low-hanging fruit of urban drinking water projects” but to do the difficult work of integrated sanitation systems for rural and peri urban communities. As for building capacity and sustaining impact, Oldfield applauds the approaches of Water for People: Everyone, Forever and IRC’s Water Services that Last.

After warning us to not snicker about World Toilet Day, Lauren Bohn declares “It’s Time to Start Giving a Shit about Toilets.” Writing in Foreign Policy, she wonders how the aid establishment could so long turn a blind eye and focus on everything but sanitation. “Open defecation remains the stinky stepsister of the health development world, overshadowed by star-studded issues such as access to clean water.” Toilet Hackers founder John Kluge claims he was ousted from New York City Fashion Week show for bringing up what he rightly sees as “the base level of all development problems.”

In contrast, an NBC News piece takes a fairly superficial stance noting that a “lack of toilet facilities is no laughing matter. In fact, it’s a deadly serious health crisis.” Yet writer Mark Koba never ventures far from bathroom humor, fecophobia, and the them and us binary. He quotes Tufts University professor William Moomaw: “Think of living in a giant cesspool and then you get some idea of the problem.” Similarly Fordham professor Christina Peppard laments that it’s hard to get past “first-grade jokes” when discussing the issue.

Despite the plethora of available information, many in the US media still appear to see sanitation as exotic, foreign, and distant. They do a good job of laying out the problem, complete with its vicious-circle loops. At the same time, few are documenting the dynamic technical ingenuity that characterizes the evolution of toilet systems in the developing world. Nor have most people seen the need for us rethink our path dependence on unsustainable end-of-pipe technologies, especially in light of water shortages in America’s south- and mid-west, deteriorating sewer infrastructure, and other environmental problems here at home. Let’s consider ways to challenge them – and ourselves – to dig a little deeper next World Toilet Day.

]]>http://www.phlush.org/2014/12/08/world-toilet-day-2014-recap/feed/0Celebrating a Gender-Inclusive World Toilet Dayhttp://www.phlush.org/2014/11/18/celebrating-a-gender-inclusive-world-toilet-day/
http://www.phlush.org/2014/11/18/celebrating-a-gender-inclusive-world-toilet-day/#commentsWed, 19 Nov 2014 05:35:03 +0000http://www.phlush.org/?p=6937World Toilet Day is now officially celebrated by the United Nations every year on November 19th to bring attention to the 2.5 billion of our fellow humans who lack access to clean safe toilets. In the United States, clean, comfortable restrooms are a common expectation whether we are at work, home, a coffee shop, or even at a park in a remote area. At least in America, we don’t have problems finding appropriate restrooms…. right?

For many of us, the answer is yes. Many if not most Americans would say they have satisfactory access to public restrooms in their daily lives. However, not all feel this way. Transgender individuals have long suffered with awkward and even dangerous dilemmas when attempting to use the restroom. The reason for this being is because many public restrooms are gender specific (i.e. men’s/women’s) and multi-stall. This means you are likely to encounter another person in that restroom. If the other person doesn’t consider you the “correct” gender, a great deal of anxiety can result.

Transgender people are in the uncomfortable position of having to choose either the restroom for the gender they were assigned at birth or the gender they now most closely identify as. This is a decision that can potentially result in verbal or even physical harassment. As an example, a trans-female (male at birth) can use the men’s room but risks harassment from men who see the individual as a woman in the wrong restroom, or even worse, might have hateful opinions of transgender people and react with violence. The women’s room might not be a better option in this scenario as many women have reacted in the same way. For transgender individuals, the decision is between two bad options. Make that three bad options if you include “holding it” until a safe restrooms available.

Some look at this issue as one that only affects 1% of America’s population and so therefore any policy action would be an overreaction. Transgender individuals, however, are not the only ones that suffer from a lack of good restroom options. All women, for instance, have noticed that the line for their restroom is frequently much longer than for the men’s room. Women normally take longer to use the toilet and typically need to use the toilet more often. This results in a greater demand for female toilets than male toilets/urinals. Having an equal number of fixtures for men and women is neither practical or unfair.

Two other groups that suffer from the gendered restroom dilemma are parents with young children and caretakers. If a female caretaker is taking an elderly male into a restroom she is breaking the gender norm whether she chooses male or female. Similarly a dad with a young daughter has to bring her into the men’s room which may offend others who have to share a space with the opposite gender. Mothers with their young sons would face a similar issue.

The good news with all of these problems is that they have a common and simple solution: unisex restrooms. Introducing a unisex or family restroom can help cut down lines coming out of the women’s room because women have access to the additional room. The single occupant unisex restroom also means that transgender individuals don’t have to worry about harassment for using the “wrong” room. Caretakers and parents won’t offend anyone by bringing in someone who is opposite gendered because they will have the room to themselves.

World Toilet Day is an opportunity to be mindful of people who do not have proper access to sanitation. Sometimes those people are our friends and neighbors who face significant obstacles to toilet use when they are away from. Fortunately, the gender-neutral family restroom is a solution that everyone can support.

This free five-week course is managed by Coursera and begins on October 13. To participate, simply register online with your name and contact information. Five experts, led by Dr. Christoph Lüthi, will present in English with French subtitles.

Says Lüthi, “We will be combining sanitary engineering with social economic and urban development issues. The course includes both theoretical knowledge and case studies featuring context-specific sanitation solutions.” Here is an outline of the five weekly modules of the course syllabus:

Introduction to sanitation planning & systems approach (Oct 13-19)

Sanitation systems & technologies: participants will practice their skills in building a complete sanitation system from user interface to disposal or re-use of products (Oct 20-27)

Urban sanitation solutions: individual exercise to propose a sanitation system for a selected (slum) site (Nov 3-Nov 9)

Wrap-up and question & answer-session and final exam (Nov 10-16)

The course includes lectures, videos, exercises, and online discussion. Participants need an internet connection, an interest, some general background in urban sanitation and at least 4-6 hours a week to read and discuss. Those completing the course will be eligible for a certificate of accomplishment.

]]>http://www.phlush.org/2014/10/05/back-to-school-free-course-in-sanitation-systems-technologies/feed/0Let’s Legalize Composting & UD toilets in UShttp://www.phlush.org/2014/08/03/support-legalization-of-composting-ud-toilets-in-the-usa/
http://www.phlush.org/2014/08/03/support-legalization-of-composting-ud-toilets-in-the-usa/#commentsSun, 03 Aug 2014 22:27:50 +0000http://www.phlush.org/?p=6865Our friends at Recode have drafted model code for composting toilets with urine diversion (UD) and IAMPO is preparing to vote on it. This Portland-based group of scientists and policy advocates have made spectacular progress. Now Recode is calling on us to help make history. Please consider a tax-deductible donation to enable Recode’s Director to travel to California to address IAMPO officials. Details are in Recode’s message below. Here’s the DONATE button.

Summer Greetings!

We’re weeks away from finalizing a national composting toilet code that includes urine diversion.

Here’s some background. IAMPO (the International Association of Plumbing and Mechanical Officials) noticed Recode’s current research and outreach and asked us to draft and submit the code. For the past four months, we have been taking comments and honing the language of this new code that will allow homeowners in North America to design and build toilet systems that protect the environment while meeting household needs and budgets.On August 22nd this draft code will go to a vote at the IAPMO Green Technical Committee Meeting.

Recode Director Melora Golden (center) with code change advocates

We want our Director Melora Golden to be there to make sure the code passes. Now we need $560 to cover Melora’s airfare ($300) and hotel ($260) at the IAPMO World Headquarters in Ontario, California. Your support can make these things happen:

Give Recode a chance to answer clarifying questions and rally support to make sure the code passes.

Enable Recode to build powerful connections with one of the largest code-making institutions in the US.

Enhance Recode’s ability to receive grants; foundations are more likely to fund organizations with community support.

Please support evidenced-based, environmentally-sound toilet code. Can you reach into your pocket? Or pass the hat at the next gathering of your environmentally-minded friends or colleagues? Ten donations of $56 will get us there. Can you do your part?

Okay, PHLUSH friends and followers, this code change is fully aligned with our mission. Let’s help Recode. Please share this request with others and on social media (using links below). Contribute what you can. To track Recode’s research and remarkable progress more closely, visit www.recode.org and sign up for Recode Updates.